Peter Suvorin was in a state of some excitement. What could the urgent summons mean? But when Popov gravely told him, he positively trembled. ‘The message from the Central Committee was very clear,’ he explained. ‘We have only hours. Are you ready to suffer for the cause?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Very well.’ They ran over all the details together. Young Suvorin had money. He quickly made a plan. Indeed, faced with a crisis, Popov noticed with interest that the young idealist was surprisingly practical. ‘How will you leave?’ he asked.
Peter considered. ‘My grandfather has a boat he uses for fishing. I’ll take that.’
‘Excellent. Go at dusk.’ Popov embraced the young man. ‘We shall meet again,’ he promised.
The light was just fading as Yevgeny Popov made his way back along the path from the springs towards Russka. When he found a good vantage point, he sat down in the warm shadows and watched the river. The pale stars had begun to shine in the turquoise sky. He waited as the turquoise deepened to indigo. There was no one about.
Then he saw the little boat. It was scudding along, hugging the bank. He watched as it slipped away, southwards, with the gentle flow of the stream. It would be at the River Oka in the morning. And as he watched, he smiled to himself. He had judged young Peter Suvorin well. He had fallen completely for the story that the police were coming to arrest them all the next day. He had genuinely supposed that the invented Central Committee wanted at all costs to preserve him. And he had at once volunteered to go into hiding for a few months. But underneath all this was another motive, of which perhaps young Peter himself was not fully aware. I just gave him his excuse to escape from his grandfather, Popov thought. He was seldom wrong about people.
And now that Peter was safely gone, it was time to begin.
Popov moved carefully. Pulling his hat well down on his head, he did not enter the town by the main gate, but skirted it and came in by the open lane on the side away from the river. There were a few people about, but no one paid any attention as he walked quietly by in the darkness.
As he expected, the narrow street by the warehouse was deserted. When he reached it, he first unlocked the little storeroom where he had hidden the printing press and then entered the main warehouse. After moving about for a while, lighting a match now and then, he found exactly what he wanted: against one wall, bales of straw were piled high; in a corner were some empty sacks; and on some shelves were a dozen lamps in which, heaven be praised, there was still some oil. Carefully, without hurry, he took bales of straw from the pile and arranged them round the walls. Then he twisted the sacks into several large torches and collected the oil into two containers. Finally, just for good measure, he carried half a dozen bales of straw round and placed them against the walls in the storeroom. Even taking his time, he was done in under half an hour.
Now, however, came the daring part of his plan. Inside the little storeroom, he carefully unearthed the parts of the printing press and the packet of leaflets. Then, checking to make sure the street was empty, he went outside.
The streets were silent. Keeping to the shadows, he made his way past the church by the market place and into the broad avenue that led to the little park and the esplanade. Three houses lay on the right-hand side, behind fences. The first of these was Savva Suvorin’s.
There were no lights at the window. The Suvorins did not retire late. Gingerly, looking about him, Popov opened the gate in the fence and went into the yard. Though the house was made of stone and masonry, the entrance, on one of the end walls, consisted of a stout wooden staircase, covered over, which rose some six feet up to the main floor. It was to the space underneath these stairs that Popov went, and deposited his things.
It was necessary to make this journey twice. The second time, as well as the leaflets and part of the hand-press, Popov brought with him a trowel from the storeroom.
Then, on his hands and knees beneath Suvorin’s staircase, he set to work.
So far, all was going to plan. Indeed, he had only made one mistake that evening, of which he was not aware. For when he left the storeroom for the second time, he did not pause to lock the door, but only pulled it to. He did not look back, a few moments later, and did not therefore see that the door, improperly fastened, was swinging open again.
Popov worked silently. The earth under the staircase was not too hard. In a few minutes he had made a hole nearly a foot deep. Steadily, careful to make no noise, he went on. As he did so, he smiled to himself.
It was the perfect symmetry of this business that he liked. By the end of the evening, Savva Suvorin and Misha Bobrov would neutralize each other. He would be in the clear. Young Peter Suvorin would be the criminal. And the printing press and revolutionary leaflets would have been buried, apparently by Peter, under the house of Suvorin himself. This last, he had to admit, was an artistic flourish; but he could not resist it. I have completely outmanoeuvred them all, he thought.
True, there were a couple of loose ends. Young Grigory and Natalia for instance. He had no special plan for them. But they were harmless. All they knew was that Peter Suvorin gave them the leaflets.
No, his scheme was perfect: he was infinitely superior to them all.
It was when the hole was nearly two feet deep and he was about to stop, that the trowel struck something hard and that, reaching down, Popov felt a smooth, rounded surface. Curiously, he scraped the earth away from it and after a minute or two he was able to pull it up. The object looked pale.
It was a skull. God knew what it was doing here. He examined it. He had enough knowledge of medicine to notice that the shape suggested it might be Mongolian rather than Slav. A Tartar perhaps? He shrugged. He couldn’t imagine what it was doing buried by Suvorin’s house.
Soon afterwards the printing press and the packet containing the leaflets were in the ground. He spread earth on top and patted it down. Then, taking the skull with him, he slipped out and made his way back towards the warehouse.
A little before he got there, he passed a street corner where a small well had been sunk. He paused only a second to drop the skull into this, hearing it splash into the water far below. And so it was that the skull of Peter the Tartar, the unknown founder of the monastery, found a new resting place in the waters under the town.
Natalia and Grigory had lingered by the dormitory until after dark, talking. She had warned him about her father’s attitude but told him: ‘He’ll soon get over it.’ And anyway, as far as she could see, Grigory did not care about her father’s opinion. Her campaign had been so successful that indeed the young man had only one thought now – how to enjoy her body. When, therefore, some time after dusk, she suggested that they go somewhere to be alone, he raised no objection.
It was the custom of young couples seeking privacy, in the warm summer months, to walk in the woods outside the town. They were just making their way towards the lane that led out of Russka when, passing the warehouse, they noticed that the door of the little storeroom was open. Looking inside, they saw to their surprise that it contained a number of bales of straw; and it occurred to Natalia that this was a fine and private place. It was the work of only a few seconds to make a little bed of straw in one corner. Then, motioning to her lover, she closed the door. Soon, she promised herself, very soon, she would be pregnant, and married.